Millions of Fishes: The Ultimate Marine Library

Immersed in thousands of gallons of isopropyl alcohol in a warehouse-like room, 2 million fish sleep forever. Marine biologist Phil Hastings is their keeper.

Hastings, who curates the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s library of fish in California, inherited the responsibility in 1999. He’s been sorting, identifying, preserving and studying the jarred specimens ever since.

The library’s first specimens arrived around 1875 with a fisherman’s catch, but it wasn’t until the 1940s that the collection grew in earnest. Today the shelves cradle creatures gathered during some 21,000 collection events, many from around-the-world cruises. Another 27,000 fishes will soon be added after sitting unsorted for half a century.

Altogether the specimens are a unique snapshot of marine life in Earth’s recent history. “We tried to estimate just the cost of all the ships that went out to collect animals, and it went into the billions of dollars. But you can’t go back in time,” Hastings said. “From a historical standpoint, the collections are priceless wonders of the world.”

Other Scripps oceanographic collections include invertebrates, mud cores and rocks. Photographer Marc Tule, a former marine biology student, has received unprecedented access to the collections. “It was an extreme honor and a labor of love,” he said. “Since I’m a big fan of marine science, it was kind of like photographing the hottest celebrities you can imagine.”

Tule, Hastings and others shared their photos with Wired.com. We show some of our favorites in this gallery.

Above:

Angler Fish

Anglers are rare, deep sea-dwelling fish, and females typically dwarf males. During mating, the male angler bites onto the female and begins fusing into her skin. After awhile, sometimes all that remains of the male are his gonads.

One female angler preserved in the collection (below) has a small male attached to her belly.

Mirrorwing Flyingfish

To photograph hundreds of different specimens several years ago, Tule and his studio’s team set up a plexiglass tub filled with alcohol. Hastings and other Scripps researchers then wheeled out jar after jar of marine creatures.

The tub allowed workers to unfurl and photograph specimens without exposing them to air for long. The mirrorwing flyingfish (above) was Tule’s favorite specimen of all.

“There’s something beautiful about its symmetry and biological design,” Tule said. “It set the tone for whole shoot.”

Fish Skeleton X-Rays

Thanks to a recent government grant, Scripps is now able to take digital X-ray photos of its specimens. Hours of film development have been reduced to seconds.

Hastings said the photos will be uploaded to a record of each specimen in the collection’s online database, allowing ichthyologists and other researchers to examine internal structures from afar.

Images: SIO

Garden Eels

The Scripps marine animal libraries are not passive repositories. Researchers continuously study specimens and identify them, all the while hunting for new species. The eels above were captured near Baja, California in 1961. Years later they were found to be a new species.

“We’re all about describing biodiversity. With the library, you can compare your material to see if what you have is something collected before, or if it’s new [to science],” Hastings said.

Shark Jaws

More than alcohol-soaked creatures line Scripps’ shelves, such as the shark remains above. The shelves themselves are 20 feet high and filled to the brim with biological goodies (below).

All specimens are taxonomically organized and cataloged, like books in a library. And like in some cramped university libraries, motors and wheels mechanically move the shelves with the turn of a dial.

Marine Mud Cores

Aside from biological collections, Scripps also houses cores of sediment collected from the ocean bottom. The layers of mud and microbes help geologists understand forces at work on the ocean bottom deep in the past.

Giant Squid

“It took some brute strength to lift this guy and splay out his tentacles,” Tule said of the effort to photograph the specimen. Shelled invertebrates also have a home in the collection, including a giant marine isopod (pill bug) from the deep sea below.

“They help us grasp the diversity of life on the planet. If you don’t have these kinds of historically comparative collections, you’re missing the global context of new observations,” he said. “And today we’re doing things we never thought we’d be able to do, like DNA sequencing. There’s an overwhelming number of questions we can ask about life on Earth using these archived specimens.”